


Pantoufles and Pantaloons

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Category: Cendrillon ou La petite Pantoufle de Verre | Cinderella - Charles Perrault, Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU: Genderswap, AU: Regency, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-04-28 01:18:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14438355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: In which there are diverse ruminations on who shall go to the ball; dress fittings; dances; and, of course, fairy tales.





	1. In Which Our Heroine Declares She Shall Go To The Ball, And Makes A Chance Acquaintance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chocolatepot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chocolatepot/gifts).



In a high attic, with a narrow paned window so dirty the sun was embarrassed to show its face through the glass, Celia Belvedere curled up on a bedevilled and bedamned old couch and paged through her book. At one particularly egregious passage she threw her half-eaten apple at the dusty stuffed raven residing on a dresser on the other side of the attic. She jumped when it toppled into the backboard and an age spotted mirror spun around to reveal an Other Girl gazing at her from the shadows. Celia stared at her reflection in some confusion. She was accustomed to thinking of herself as what her step-mother referred to as an ‘odd duck,’ with a long nose, thick brass spectacles prosaically perched on her nose, and ears that had always struck her young self as elephantine. Although, she supposed, the unfashionable way she had styled her hair, with her straight brown locks combed severely back from her face with none of the ringlets that a set of curling irons might bestow on those the Fairy of Beauty had snubbed, probably did not help matters. Nor did the dust smuts on her face. Alas, but there it was.

From the stairs below, she heard thumping, and the persistent calls of her step‑mother demanding her attendance. Celia cringed and curled up under an old horse blanket, hoping for anonymity for a few moments more.

It was not to be. Her step‑mother, Her Grace the Duchess of Kendal, emerged into the half-light in a terrible scold.

“Oh, ashes and cinders, girl. There you are, hiding again, when you promised me you would accompany me to the dressmaker at two o’clock. Mlle Meunier is so prestigious she never holds back appointments, no matter the quality of her clientele, and it will be another _week_ before we can even get you in to be measured.”

“Oh, but Mama—” Celia protested. “Just look at it, won’t you? My great grandfather had an entire collection of Strabo’s _Geographica_ stored in the attic. I didn’t even know the old duffer could read. I was so caught up in the stories I quite lost track of the time—look, here’s one about a courtesan called Rhodopis whose sandal was stolen by an eagle…”

“I don’t care, you dreadful girl. I asked you to do _one thing_ for me today, and one thing only. If we don’t get you into a proper gown for your coming of age ball you might as well attend in rags and patches, and _then_ what will all the eligible young men think? And their mothers, the interfering old besoms, who will say that I am shirking you a decent dress allowance out of spite and jealousy.  However I am to get you married off, I do not know.”

Celia rolled her eyes. “I suspect, dear Alice, that my position as a Duke’s heiress without entail will be sufficient inducement for some ambitious fellow. As the gamesters might say, the odds of a proposal or three are likely to be in my favour.”

“Oh, you ungrateful child. After _all_ that your father has done for you, sending you off to those foreign seminaries, encouraging you to bury yourself in books instead of learning how to, well, to ‘get on’ with people. And all those strange places you’ve been, and you did not bring back any proper pictures; just rocks and dirty coins and bits of carved stone—”

Celia threw her arms around her step‑mother. “Oh, Alice, the only kind thing my father has done for me since my own little mother died is to marry _you_. He sent me off on the Grand Tour early to get me out of the way while you were a young bride and he didn’t want to deal with the awkwardness. He’s quite selfish, really, easily as selfish as I am, and it takes a Belvedere to know one, it really does.” She nestled her head under Alice’s chin and continued:

“Please don’t frown and show your irked face to me, you know it wrinkles your forehead and you will be forever smoothing unguents on your alabaster brow in consequence, when you could be spending your evening reading Shakespeare to me instead. Oh, please, please. I _shall_ go to the ball, I shall. I will smile and dance, even with the most odious fortune hunters, but only for you, my dearest. And you will promise me, dearest Alice, that any change in my living circumstances will be co‑incident with lengthy visits from my darling Mama. Only for you will I go through something so odious as a _dress_ fitting.”

***

There were some wags who had jested that when the Earl of Uxbridge chose his second wife, a woman in straitened circumstances with a young child in tow, he was merely acting to minimise his housekeeping wages. The Earl, it was widely known, was accustomed to squeezing a penny until it shone brighter than a new pin, and the young Mrs Darlington had lacked the fortune that a typical lady of quality might bring as dowry in her putatively joyful match to a member of the aristocracy. Alas, whatever economies the Earl might have expected from the acquisition to his household of a woman of uncommon good sense and practicality; they were shortly disencumbered by the tragic passing of the lady only a year later of some putrid fever. There remained in his household, thereby, the young son of a gentleman, one Edward Darlington, who was considered a desperate drain on the Earl’s finances—as Uxbridge’s late father had been a gamester of some repute, and his estates were sadly encumbered, the addition of a third mouth to both feed and educate was considered a cack-handed arrangement by the Earl’s rather callow and drunken friends.

“Not that that has ever particularly concerned him,” Edward thought wryly, as he trotted along the streets carrying the heavy basket of the cook’s marketing. He paused outside a shop with olive green columns and discrete plate glass displaying its luxurious wares. “I really shouldn’t,” he thought to himself. He shouldn’t, but he ducked inside the hushed confines anyway.

In the velvet and wood panelled confines of the bookshop, the owners had set out a table displaying their finest new wares. Edward traced careful fingers over an edition he hadn’t seen before, _Kinder- und Hausmärchen,_ with a finely tooled leather cover. He opened the book to the frontispiece and smiled at the picture of an angel comforting a little girl and a sleeping deer. He paged through and stopped at another picture; a girl in rags and ash smuts surrounded by a flock of doves.

“It’s very gruesome,” a pleasant voice said from above his head. He looked up startled, into wide bespectacled eyes; the pebbly lenses of the glasses making the girl’s face seem almost clownish. “Everybody ends up with their feet cut off, or ogres eating their children, or cannibal mothers.” She sighed happily.

Edward closed the book guiltily. “I haven’t read any of these German stories yet. I’ve read reviews in one of the periodicals, though.”

“You’ll like it.”

He cocked his head at this strangely forward girl. She was dressed in the sober browns of the middle classes, her hair sensibly dressed; but the cloth of her coat was good sound wool, and the muslin of the dress beneath was sprigged. All of it had the subtle finesse of cut that one looked for from the _best_ dressmakers. She ducked her head, suddenly. “I mean, that is, I always assume that people will like what I like. It’s a dreadful habit. What were you here to buy? We can talk about your books, too, if you like.”

“The newspaper, actually,” he said, gesturing at the basket he carried. “Very pedestrian. But I like to look at the books when I come by. Ah…” he added delicately, “you don’t have your maid or a friend with you?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “And what dreadful fate would become me in _Hatchard’s_ of all places. This is the nineteenth century, for God’s sake.” She looked both chagrined and proud of her swear. “Also, Alice says that books make her sneeze, and it’s too nice a day to be shut up with them.”

“Edward! Edward!” A callow voice emerged from the stygian darkness of the back of the shop. “ _There_ you are. We’re late for my fencing practice; the maestro sent a note asking my attendance this morning instead. Dratted boy, you’re never where you’re wanted. I’ve had to hunt in every shop on this street for you.”

“Ah, consider me the poor relation,” Edward said. “I have to go.”


	2. In Which The Rain, Which Falls On The Just And Unjust Alike, Also Falls On The Young And Romantic

He saw the girl again a few days later, as the skies opened and torrents of water descended from unchancy clouds. She and another woman were hovering uneasily in a closed shop doorway, in cotton dresses too light for the weather, and by that token drenched. The girl’s own dress was slick with mud, and torn.

“Er, excuse me,” he said, “we’ve met briefly. Could I be of assistance? I have a very good umbrella.”

“Oh, would you?” the girl chimed, in a musical voice. “We went out without our carriage because the day was so fine, and now I’ve twisted my ankle, and it’s so _wet_. And we can’t find a messenger boy to send for it because everyone is so sensibly taking shelter _already._ ”

“If you wish, I could help you and your…” Edward made some hasty calculations – the older woman was too young to be a mother or aunt, too well dressed to be a paid chaperone “…sister? The house where I live is not far from here, and our coachman could take you home.”

“This is my step-mama, Alice, Her Grace the Duchess of Kendal.” The young woman gathered her muddied skirts with one arm, graceful despite her injured ankle and accepted his proffered arm gratefully. As they promenaded slowly along the wet cobbles, the rain drumming on his umbrella, she appeared to float as a graceful cloud, only the weight on his arm testament to her injury. That was what years of deportment training got you, he supposed.

He took them in the front door of Uxbridge House and settled them into their one _good_ room. “If you will excuse the informality, I will arrange for some tea,” he said, and dashed out to the kitchen. Lizzie, the maid from next door, was gossiping with Mama Pereira, and he charmed the pair of them as he set the kettle on to boil to get Lizzie’s agreement to bring the tray in to the Duchess. “I’ll come over and help you with your ironing,” he promised, hand on heart.

“And,” he scurried into the morning room and set one of his treasures from the library before the two women. “Something to entertain you while you wait for the rain to stop.”

“Excuse me,” the girl said. She fumbled in her reticule. “I’m blind as a bat without my spectacles, and they bother Mama so I don’t wear them when we’re walking together. Oh, good gracious. You’re the boy from the shop! I’ve been talking to you all this time and not realising we’d been introduced. You must think me dreadfully rude.”

“It’s alright, my lady. I know my place.”

“I don’t know mine. Never did,” she said cheerfully, and gave him her hand. “Lady Celia Belvedere.” She looked at the book and her eyes behind the pebbled lenses quirked a little. “Well, look at that now. Alice, it’s an early edition of the Perrault tales. _Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye_ , it’s over a hundred years old.  My goodness,” she said as she paged through, “my goodness.”  She leafed through until she found the old ribbon he had been using as a bookmark.  “You like little Cendrillon, I see.”

“Ugh,” said the Duchess. “I don’t like that story. All those rats and lizards being turned into coachmen, I’m sure it’s very vulgar. I’d much rather have my Andrew Coachman in his good wool coat. I like the glass shoes,” she added wistfully, “that must be like dancing in the clouds.”

“But that seems rather unfair to the rats and the lizards,” Edward said earnestly. “Perhaps M Perrault really wanted the story to be about blessing _them_. Perhaps they always dreamed of one night being human, and little Cendrillon is merely decorative detail.”

Her Grace frowned in thought. “Oh, you are joshing me,” she said suddenly. Edward winked at her.

“And the pumpkin, too, of course,” Lady Celia added. “There it is all day, earnestly growing away, looking forward only to an ending of life as some cow’s dinner, and then, pouf, some glittering creation blesses it with but one night as a six-horse carriage. Perhaps it had always had dreams of being dined on by a bishop.”

Edward raised his cup of tea in a toast. “Here is to all who aspire to have their true worth shown to the world. If only for one night.”

“The French version is a lot less bloody than my good old Brothers Grimm story, though. You know, the new book with all the ogres and trolls.  In _my_ one, the ugly step‑sisters get their feet cut off.”

Edward coughed, trying not to laugh. He looked out the window and saw that the rain had ceased.

“Excuse me, Madam, Miss and Sir,” Lizzie came in and bobbed uncertainly. The carriage is ready for you now.”

Regretfully, Edward helped the two women out the door. The rain, as sudden as it had arrived, had cleared already, that strange interlude of shelter from the storm had ended and they were back to the formalities. Or not quite:

“Olá, Edu, as senhoras,” the coachman called. “A chuva parou. Vamos!”

“Your coachman is very rude,” The Duchess of Kendal said, quite disapprovingly.

“Well, he is rude,” Edward said, “quite often. But not today – he was saying it’s time to go. He was my father’s batman, you see, and claiming an old servant’s privilege. Obrigado, Tio Pereira!” he called

“He is Spanish?” Lady Celia asked.

“Portuguese. When I was a boy he used to carry me up on his shoulders and make‑believe I was a giant.”

She twinkled at him. “Then here’s to being giants.”

And then they were gone.


	3. In Which There Is Fighting

In the fencing salon of M Lefèvre, Edward stepped and stepped quickly, following the directions of the Maestro. The master beat down in a sudden strike, and Edward raised his arm to block, then twisted into a quick disarm. The Maestro was too experienced to be taken by such a trick, but his lined face creased into a rare smile regardless.

“Good, little boy, c’est bon, you are making some progress. And now for my bigger boy, allez!” and he struck the same overhead blow at Edward’s older brother. Step‑brother, to be precise.

Charles, taller, burlier, handsomer, but also lazier, fumbled the block and dropped his rapier. “You surprised me,” he muttered.

“Nom d’un chien,” the Maestro scowled at him, and repeated the strike. Charles managed the block this time, but struggled to hold it against the overbearing might of his teacher. “And on the field of war will your enemy stop and shine his pantoufles, how you say, his dancing shoes, and cough and announce ‘Excusez‑moi’ until you are ready for him?” Charles buckled and lost the block, and backed away a step as the Maestro held the blunted training sword against his throat. “La, you see, little students of mind. Make your choice then _commetrez_. Right or wrong, follow through.”

He gestured to the youths present, ten young men of the Quality, or trying to be, who were lined up in the salle trying to acquire the skills of a gentleman, “Now in pairs, mes enfants. Practice your skills in the spar.”

Edward paired up with Charles and began to fence. He knew his role in this part of the class well, do just badly enough that Charles, who displayed to advantage in his cream-coloured fencing jacket, might shine in front of the ladies visiting the class. It frustrated him, and he knew it frustrated their fencing master, but as the Earl had often stated: Charles making a good match was to be the saving of them all, and that was that.

Charles jerked his head at the door and nodded meaningfully. Edward risked a glance to the side and saw the Duchess of Kendal and her young charge quietly taking seats. Then he raised his arm quickly as Charles brought down the same overhead blow that they had been practicing. Distracted, he blocked it again and used his new disarm without thinking it through. The clang of Charles’ fallen sword resounded through the salle and Edward blushed awkwardly at the small smattering of applause from the audience. He quailed at Charles’ furious glare dimly seen through the fencing mask, which was certain sure to mean trouble later. Charles hastily forced his features into a sneer that might charitably be called a smile (if the light were chancy).

“Good, good,” the Maestro said, “you are putting your drills to good use. Again!”

At Charles’ thunderous look, Edward transferred his foil to his off hand and mimed an injury. “Alas, I am sorry, Maestro, but I think I may have sprained my wrist. Charles is so strong, you know,” he said, loudly enough to carry.

Lefèvre looked mad enough to spit and sent him away. “I give you gold and you return me tin.  Pfah!”

Edward sat on the front bench and pretended to nurse his wrist as the sparring restarted. Behind him, he could hear the Duchess and the strangely forward Lady Celia chattering away, as they watched young gentlemen enter and gad about preparatory to getting changed for their own turn with the master. “I must say,” Lady Celia was saying, “this new fashion for pantaloons leaves very little to the imagination. I feel like I’m living in the Parson’s Tale and some shabby old vicar is about to stand up and denounce short coats and the horrible disordinate scantiness of young men’s leg coverings.”

He coughed, imagining a sober Parson waxing lyrical about tight hose and horrible swollen members, and hoped the lady would refrain from suggesting that there be a new fashion for particoloured pantaloons. He supposed that she must be wearing her glasses today. They made her look like an elf, he rather thought, who was peering in through a glass from fairyland.

As the clock drew close to the hour, he rose and started gathering their gear. Oddly, the Earl himself, Edward’s step-father, had made an appearance as well, together with his odious oldest son, Clive. He shrank back as the Earl approached, but the old man was looking upwards and he had his charming face on. While he might, in the abstract, admire the ageing roué’s technique, the thought of it being turned on a nice girl such as the Lady Celia made his stomach churn. He stood to attention regardless, and tucked his helmet under his arm, his sword neatly held and listened to the Earl’s patter as the old man expanded the introductions.

“These are my sons, Duchess: Clive, the Lord Brackley, and Mr Charles Fendalton. Oh, and Edward.”

“Oh, we know young Mr Edward already,” Lady Celia smiled, her face blank and haughty without her spectacles on. “Rescuer of beleaguered ladies and lover of fairy tales. I’ve been pleased to make his acquaintance. I was very impressed by the collection in your library.”

“Of course, of course, I would be charmed to present to two such lovely ladies the hospitality of my household, but I am unfortunately a bachelor now. I heard a rumour,” he looked coy, “that your own house will shortly be opening for a celebration. A treat for the young people for your birthday.”

Lady Celia looked subdued. “Oh, my birthday ball. Yes, that will be soon.”

“I’m sure it will be a splendid celebration,” Charles oozed, and bent to kiss her hand. Edward, standing behind his step‑brothers winced in sympathy at Lady Celia’s discomfort. He dropped his sword and stumbled slightly.

“Oh, you’re the boy who hurt his wrist,” the Duchess of Kendal said with concern.

“It will be fine with a bit of rest at home,” he assured her.

“Then we’d better not keep you,” Her Grace said, and the two women bustled away.

As Edward and his relatives cleared through the door of Uxbridge House, he knew he was for it. The Earl had been too furious to speak on the walk home; Clive and Charles too aware of the passers by to shout. As the door shut on the private space the Earl exploded.

“ _In my own house!_ ” he hissed. “What serpent’s tooth are you, that you entertained a _Duke’s heiress_ in my own house, and you never spoke of it. Not one word, not one hint, that your brother might make use of, this, this—”

“Gross impropriety,” Clive sneered.

“ _Impropriety_ ,” the Earl sputtered. “To have the Duke of Kendal’s family in a state of obligation. That any child of mine…”

“Father. Yes, Her Grace the Duchess of Kendal and her daughter the Lady Celia Belvedere _were_ here, briefly. Lady Celia had had a slight accident and I offered the assistance of the house. I was, I was entertaining them in the hope that you, Charles and Clive would return in time to greet them—” Slight of stature, he was always dwarfed by his step-father’s massive build and always, vexedly, found himself quailing under the man’s thunderous rages for all that he had learned his two horrible step-brothers to respect his speed and dexterity.

“Be off with you! Out, out. Get out of my sight.”

Out in the yard, he quailed in his old childhood fears, returned to the slight boy trying to hold his own against two older, meaner bullies. Clive and Charles had reverted as well, and began to push him, from one to the other, settling into the preliminaries. “The Lady Celia Belvedere is a Duke’s heiress,” Charles snarled. “In the next few months she will make her choice of husband, who will receive a substantial settlement. Her estate is not entailed.”

Clive stuck a foot out and Edward tripped, fell, and rolled quickly back to his feet in sheer panic. “There will be no social calls. There will be no visits or cards, there will be no _balls_. Oh yes,” he said knowingly. “We know all about your little self-improvement campaign, and your tips, and your fiddles, and your little sewing project in the attic. Can you imagine?”

Edward backed into a corner between the coal chute and the rubbish heap. There was nowhere to go. Charles drew his arm back and punched him hard in the stomach. As Edward doubled over, gasping, his step‑brother whispered in his ear: “Can you imagine a world where a boy born in a _shop_ would be permitted to court a woman of the nobility? Such a world does not exist.”

Hours later, when Edward had recovered enough to stagger up to his attic room, the room had been turned over. His bedding was flung about, his papers strewn across the floor, books were ripped. And more.

The evening coat he had been piecing together had been pulled off its mannequin and cut to pieces. Edward closed his eyes and thought of his mother. There was nowhere to go.


	4. In Which Edward Meets A Fop, And A Dandy

“Oh, it’s you again,” a pleasant voice descended from above. Edward looked up, startled. He had been holding up a corner in a shady part of Hyde Park, waiting for the phaeton containing the dreadful Charles and the current young lady of fashion Charles wished to entice to return for him. Smiling down at him was the young Lady Celia, bespectacled to damn them all, and her fashionably elegant step-mother, the Duchess, tricked out in riding habits of the first stare. “I’ve been wondering if I had your address aright, Mr Fendalton. I sent an invitation to my coming of age ball to your house, but it came back misdirected with the advice that no Mr Edward Fendalton resided there. The ones for your brothers have not yet arrived back at _all_.” She rolled her eyes in frustration. “It’s very remiss of the Penny Post.”

“Ah,” Edward said judiciously, recalling some busyness in the house a few days ago. “They did receive them. We weren’t properly introduced, formerly—my name is Darlington.

“Oh?” The Duchess of Kendal frowned delicately.

“My mother was the Earl’s second wife, and I not his third son. My father was a captain in the —rd.”

“And for the step‑son the husks and rinds and skimmed milk?” Lady Celia said, sympathetically. She had, he thought with chagrin, the knack of seeing further through a brick wall than most. She nudged her horse along the path—“Would you care to walk with us?” He held up a companionable arm to lead the Duchess’ horse, despite the ache that lingered in his bones; Lady Celia, he could tell, scorned such niceties. “So they educate you but treat you as a servant?”

Edward blushed scarlet as a cardinal. It was true, but his pride could not stand such honesty. He forced a smile and tried to make it casual.

“Well… I am not so bereft of connection as I may perhaps appear. My father’s father _has_ offered to buy me some colours in Papa’s regiment, and it is a handsome offer considering he disliked Mama so. He thinks I’m a dreadful coward for refusing such generosity. Perhaps I am.” He grimaced.

“You don’t like the strings attached?” Lady Celia’s brow was delicately furrowed, her butterfly eyebrows a picture of concern.

“I don’t wish to go to war. I know what it’s like to follow the drum, the privations of the common soldiers, the harm to the people.” He closed his eyes and remembered again the anguish on his father’s face in those last dreadful hours. “I liked being in Spain and Portugal, when we were travelling with my father’s regiment. I liked _being_ there, talking with the men, and the peasants we were fighting for. Seeing the world. I just wish soldiery was the last resort and not the first.

“If I could be anything, it would be a diplomat—finesse England’s way through the world instead of smashing it with a mallet. That’s what I would do. Dreadfully unpopular and unmanly, of course,” he added with a wry smile. “More common‑sensically, I think I could manage as a doddery old vicar. I could creak about being given tea with the best china, and speaking long obscure sermons that nobody understands, and absolutely do _not_ display any peculiar fascination with the finer details of men’s fashionable attire, particoloured or otherwise.” Lady Celia laughed, and he capered about as if he were an old man leaning on a wobbly walking stick.

He raised his eyebrows high in comical misunderstanding of her expression, and Lady Celia threw back her head in a peal of laughter, until her step-mama interrupted. “Celia, darling,” she gestured to the pendant watch pinned to her habit, “we must go now to be in time for dinner at your grandmother’s.”

“Oh, there’s another quarter hour yet before we have to go.”

“Not for you to be properly dressed,” the Duchess said firmly. “You _promised_.”

Edward knew a hint when he heard one. “I think I see my brother coming,” he chimed in, peering through the trees dappled by late sun. “I must take my leave of you, Your Grace, Lady Celia.”

The Duchess nodded civilly, but Lady Celia retrieved a small notebook from a pocket of her habit, balancing easily on her horse as she wrote. She held up the page with his name and direction to him: “do I have you aright now?”

He nodded painfully. As the two women cantered off, he climbed a small hillock so that he could watch their easy grace a little longer.

Well, then. The knots in his throat and his chest could stay a while, and he could take the long way home. So what if his step-brothers had sent back the invitation meant for him—he could never have afforded the fine clothes for such a ball anyway, and the Earl would not in any world have obliged. It was for the best, really. He headed down one of the less travelled paths, still manicured, but less popular with the glamour set. Under the tall oaks he took in deep gulps of air.

It was then he heard a faint cry and, following it through the dim trees, he found a man of intense corpulence sprawled on the ground beneath an overturned phaeton. The horse, tangled in the broken harness had come half free and was struggling to rise, its flanks dripping with sweat, too desperate to make more sound than a shocked whinny as it dragged the light carriage across the man’s leg. Edward hurried to the horse and caught its bridle. He hauled the terrified beast’s head down and whispered sweet nothings into its ear, the meaningless words his father had used when they were on campaign to calm the cavalry horses, grass‑green recruits, frightened civilians, and his son. He cut the animal free of its traces and wasted precious minutes walking to calm it until he felt able to assist the fallen gentleman.

“Can you rise, sir?” he asked, as he lifted the wrecked phaeton off the man’s leg. The man gave a terrible groan, but he could sit unaided.

“It’s as well you looked after the horse,” the man groaned. “I’d hate to have old Juniper ruined. _Dash_ my incompetence. I was trying to win a race around the park and thought this shortcut would be clear. But as you can see...” He waved at the heavy fallen branch that had precipitated the incident. “Ah, well, my helpers will be here soon enough. Walk Juniper for me, will you? It’ll be death to that horse to let him take a chill, and I'm fond of the beast.” Edward nodded and set to it, walking in great circles as he clucked to the horse, looking back frequently to check on the old man.

On his third loop around, a cluster of lackeys had assembled around the man and Edward surrendered Jupiter to one of them with a reassuring pat. “Will the gentleman be alright?” he asked. “I fear that his leg was broken.”

“His _Highness_ ,” the servant stressed with heavy pomposity, “will be perfectly well. We are sending for a carriage and his physician to attend to him. Your services are no longer needed. Sir.” That last was added with the superciliousness that only the truly superior servant could master. Edward admired his lofty demeanour even as he quailed. The—oh God—the Prince Regent beckoned him over.

“That was well done,” the Prince wheezed, “I like a boy with pluck and good sense.” He reached into his pocket and pressed something into Edward’s hand. “Here. I know my thanks would be enough, but I never met a young man yet who couldn’t use a few of the readies to impress his young lady.” When Edward tried to refuse, the Prince Regent wrapped his hand more firmly around the paper. “No, no. You put on a good show, my boy. But you’re Uxbridge’s brat, and he’s always four sheets to the wind—just like me. I’ll lay my thanks where they’ll be useful. I learned that the hard way,” and the man flashed the sudden bright grin that must have given the young Prince Florizel such a reputation for charm. He groaned as his servants raised him up onto a litter. “Go well, little boy.”

It wasn’t until Edward had reached his home that he realised he was clutching a twenty-pound note. Sitting in the kitchen keeping Senhora Pereira company, he found a footman in the Duke of Kendal’s livery. “Mr Edward _Darlington_?” the servant asked. The footman was clearly trying hard, but he yet lacked the superior hauteur of the Prince Regent’s staff, Edward thought to himself with a hidden smile. When he nodded, the footman presented him with a sealed envelope. “I am adjured and admonished to deliver this to your hand only.”

Edward nodded formally. The footman seemed quite young, and his Adam’s apple quivered beneath a weak chin and cheeks too smooth to need shaving more than weekly. He put his hand to his heart. “I thank you for your precious missive. Your sacred errand is now discharged, O faithful servant.” He searched in his meagre purse for a respectable tip—the look of the thing mattered. The footman bowed stiffly and marched away through the back door. Edward shrugged in the cook's direction—Mama Pereira had been caring for him as long as he could remember and had sarcastic eyebrows—and opened the letter.

It was an invitation to Lady Celia’s ball.

***

Edward stood in front of his bank, holding the precious twenty-pound note in his hand. A boy of sense would walk inside, deposit the money, and add it to the careful store of funds he was putting aside to buy him some more terms at Oxford. A boy of sense would do that. He sighed and thought of Lady Celia, wondered how such a graceful soul might dance, and what she might say about her coming-of-age ball afterwards when she had her glasses and sense of mischief back on. A boy of sense would put that fairy tale aside. He squared his shoulders and walked into the bank to close out his account. Let the fairy tale live.

An hour and three warehouses later, his romance had hit a vast impenetrable wall of thorns—convincing tradesmen who were accustomed to selling to the Ton that his money was good.  Fabric suitable for an evening coat he might be able to scratch together from his back-alley contacts, but the silk stockings and fine dancing shoes of a gentleman…they needed to be bought from a shop, or not at all.

“Get away with you,” the shopkeeper snarled. “You’re the Earl of Uxbridge’s by‑blow, and no amount of clean linen will hide it. Nor his debts. Take that stolen money away with you.”

Edward’s chin lifted. “My father was a gentleman, sir. This money was a gift from the Prince Regent himself, for providing aid.”

In the shop as sardonic audience, a dandy watched them argue with cynical amusement. He was a man of exquisite propriety in his dress, his blue coat of Bath coating beautifully fitted, over an immaculately starched cravat that had been teased into folds both pleasing to the eye and framing the man’s elegantly pale skin and bouffant clean curls of hair that just brushed his collar. “Wait,” the dandy announced, and such was his air of quiet authority that the shopkeeper quailed.

“Walk for me,” the man gestured. “Now turn. Show me your bow, boy.” He clapped a hand on Edward’s shoulder. “Well, the bones are there, and something in the carriage. We will need to procure you a new coat, though. That ragbag lacks the certain something in the fit that a gentleman requires… Your commission is accepted.”

“But—?”

“Now, now, let no one say that a boy blessed by the Prince Regent is undeserving of grace. Brummell’s the name, you unlicked cub. Take away that dreadful selection of clogs and bring out your _real_ stock,” the dandy gestured irritably at the shopkeeper, who scurried away, all servility. “Never let it be said that that fat toad has gotten the better of _me_ ,” he muttered under his breath.

“Sir, I can’t—”

“Boy, be silent. You _shall_ go to the ball.”


	5. In Which There Are Diverse Preparations, Dancing... And More Fighting

“I _shall_ go to the ball,” Celia said glumly. “I shall go to the ball.” Standing on a low stool, she winced as Mlle Meunier misplaced a pin. “Oh, Alice, do I really have to go to the ball? I hate dancing, and these low dresses make my bosom jiggle so—it’s very distracting, you know—”

“Celia, you _promised._ ” Alice fingered through a selection of ribbons arrayed in fashionable colours.

“But Mama, if I’m to select a husband and helpmeet, why would a _ball_ be the place to do it? It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were the order of the day.”

“But then it would be rather less like a ball.  Aha!” Alice held up a finger. “I read novels, too. You shall not pretend that you are cribbing off some mouldy Greek philosopher _this_ time.”

Celia sighed. “But there’ll be _nobody_ to _talk_ to.  Mark my words, that nice young boy who knows Chaucer won’t even come, and Papa will be presenting for inspection a string of stuffy land owners and meat headed soldiers. And you never get to talk to your partner because contradanses are respectable, and waltzes are not, and, and—"

“You _promised_.” Alice settled firmly in an armchair between Celia and the fitting room door, with an ominous glower. “But,” she pulled a small book from her reticule, in any case, “if you’re a good girl and stay still for your fitting, I will read you some sonnets.”

***

“And here is our bookworm, come again, jiggety jig.”

The old man was lounging in his wing chair, his legs stretched out, his gouty foot settled on a tuffet. It was well after midnight, and the candles on the small table near him were nearly burned down. Edward, who had been about the town getting lessons on deportment from the inestimable Beau Brummell, refused to flinch and sat down on the chair opposite his step-father.

“I know you come here, boy. I’ve always known. Pour me more port,” he said, imperious, and fading from lack of sleep or the liquor—who could say?

“It’s gathering dust,” Edward said gravely. “Books are meant to be read, if only by myself.”

“And what would you do, boy, if I sold this old library, which gathers dust, and is of use to no one save yourself? The sale would fetch a tidy packet, I fancy. All my latest debts would be cleared.” His lidded eyes had a saturnine gleam, daring Edward to who knew what misstep.

The boy gazed vacantly around the room, his fingers caressing fretfully over the cover of the book he held. “I would consider your promise to my mother void, I expect. She wanted me raised as a gentleman. Not much else reason to stay here.”

His answer seemed to satisfy the Earl, for a faint smile creased the edge of his mouth. “I like a boy to have spirit. Just like your mother, for whom I was fond, despite all such appearances.” He sighed, drifting into sleep. “The best of them really.”

***

Two days later, Edward donned his white shirt, cleaned and starched with aching precision, and gazed at himself in the age spotted looking glass. A young man with thick black hair, the blue eyes that his mother had always said came from his father; fine collar bones and high cheek bones, that he knew had come from her. Skin that was fair and showed a blush, unmanly as that was. He was foolish, he knew, to spend all he had on this one night of borrowed glory, but yet there it was.

The man who had chosen to be his valet for this night presented him with an array of snowy cravats. Brummell selected one with a considering frown and arranged it around Edward’s naked throat in intricate folds. “Why are you doing this?” Edward asked. “Why have you taken all this trouble to help me?”

Brummell fussed with the fit of Edward’s coat. “Let no man say that his tailor makes him,” he said firmly, “nor his valet. And yet, to the discriminating eye there is a certain something...” The older man’s hand trembled as he brushed minute particles off Edward’s shoulder. In the glass, Edward could see a sneer pass over Brummell’s face. Just as quickly, the look of disgust vanished and he returned to fussing over the set of the collar. “All men want their legacy. Some choose the venal path of flesh and blood, or to be known for their gluttony—” Brummell’s great quarrel with the Prince Regent, Edward recalled, had publicly begun with the question ‘who’s your fat friend?’ – “I choose youth and beauty,” Brummell stated. Testified, as one might say. “You always know where you are with the fit of a good coat. And boy, if I catch you touching your clothes after you leave this room, you’ll be for it.”

Edward nodded mutely. He picked up the mask he had made, gold filigree over midnight blue and settled it over his eyes. “All cats are grey in the dark,” he said inanely.

“Sacrilege,” Brummell told him with a smile. His fingers trembled again and the man clenched his hand to stop it. “One final matter," and Brummell produced from a small case a pair of silver cufflinks, engraved with a curious design of a gentleman’s dancing slipper crossed with a needle. “You are not the only scion of a shopkeeper's getting. You, too, my Edward, may also rise. If you seize your chance. And to hell with the morning after.”

***

From a high window of Kendal House, Celia donned her spectacles and peered into the darkness. Footmen had lit torches all around her front door, and each passing carriage emerged as a sudden bloom in the golden light, to deposit its passengers in splendour, before departing again into the outer darkness. She tallied the coats of arms idly in her head—not a pumpkin in the lot, nor even a solitary frog to liven things—noting sadly that the Uxbridge carriage, rude Portuguese coachman and all, had disgorged only three men, all too tall and burly to be her little cinder boy.

“Celia? It’s time.”

Alice sat next to her on the window seat and pressed an arm around her shoulders. “It will be alright, my darling girl.” Celia took off her glasses, returned to the misty watercolours of fashionable life, and settled a mask over her face. If this was to be a marriage mart, at least they could all pretend to be strangers to the precise calculations of shillings and pounds that went into any aristocratic pairing. She rested her head on her mother’s shoulder, afraid that her despair would show even through the mask.

“Did _you_ marry for love, dearest Alice?”

Her mother stroked her hair. “I married for affection,” she said calmly. “I did, and I still do, like your father. There were other practical considerations, of course, but you know, sometimes these things work out.”

They descended arm in arm down the grand staircase into the fray.

Her father, the grizzled old Duke, arrayed as a great eagle, led her into the solemn cadences of the minuet. They bowed to each other, and to the waiting dancers, stepped, swayed, offered their hands to each other and passed by as stately planets orbiting some empty void. Other dancers joined, and more, progressing with delicate and infinitesimal patience down the hall. As they reached the last measure she caught sight of a late arrival, a young man, the silkenswift in midnight blue coat and coal black pantaloons walk pridefully through the ballroom door and _watch_ her.

She glanced over her shoulder as she turned and turned again in stately measure with her father, unsettled by the intense focus and easy grace of the figure behind the fantastical cat’s mask. The musicians struck their final chord and she curtseyed low to the Duke, eyes demurely downcast. After a moment’s silence she rose and walked through the crowd of guests to find the Blue Cat.

He was gone.

Celia strode swiftly through the ballroom, dodging strangers, their masks turned into grotesques in the candlelight and the reflecting mirrors. Blue coats, blue coats and snowy linen, and a froth of cravat framing the face… they kept looming out of the crowd at her, only to be revealed on closer inspection to be masqued as some other creature. She was stopped by her step‑mother, dressed as an old-fashioned Queen, who was talking quietly to one of the young men visiting their house. The gentleman, disguised as a fantastical orange horse, turned and bowed to her, and requested the pleasure of her company in the next dance. She curtseyed, and they spent the next half hour progressing through the intricate criss-cross of a scotch reel. Now, _now_ it was too late, she could see the Blue Cat three pairs down, making the hops and steps and claps with quick graceful feet. A new measure, and they touched hands as they crossed in the hey. Her hand tightened for she felt as if she had been struck by a spark from the fire. The Cat, brought into sudden focus, tilted his head in acknowledgement before being swept away by the pattern of the dance. The music ended and she was taken away by a Harlequin, then a Spanish Don.

She saw the Blue Cat again when, breathless, she drank some negus to slake her parched mouth. He was framed by glittering candlelight and the stars shining through the tall windows behind him, her eyes by some strange alchemy could see him clearly against the blur of the crowded room. His mouth curved into a slow smile and he took a step toward her as if to speak.

The Cat was crowded out—a Ram, a black Raven, and a black and white Ferret had managed to place themselves around her in a semi-circle, blocking sight of the slighter man. The Ram, a tall and solidly built fellow, bowed and asked her if she would dance with him.

Celia forced a smile. The etiquette manuals were all clear on this point—to refuse a gentleman’s request without a conviction to end dancing for the evening was the Cut Direct. She was led away into a quadrille and made meaningless answers to bland remarks from the sheep next to her as she watched the Blue Cat dancing with her dearest Alice across the circle from her, his long well-turned legs springing lithely through the dance.

This was the supper dance, and she was perforce obliged to be settled at table by the Ram who overserved her white soup and salmon pie. She picked at her food and watched her table partner succumb to a good appetite. She tried not to picture a pig snuffling at a trough, but in time she was sure all that muscle would turn to fat. The Ferret across from him took to his partridge as a weasel might slaughter some defenceless bird—she shook her head, feeling dizzy from the heat, the wine, or the insistent crowd pressing around her. She was growing fanciful.

At the bottom of the table, Alice laughed happily—the Cat had said something witty. At the table’s head, the Duke her father smiled benevolently, his Eagle mask seeming more and more like some brooding dragon.

Celia returned to the conversation at hand, blinked hastily, and asked the Raven who was sitting across from her to repeat his question. He was an old man, in an ancient mask picked out in silver traceries, and it seemed he wanted to know what novels were popular with the young people these days.

“In fact, I like fairy tales,” she said cheerfully. “They are a nice diversion from my studies of the Classics.”

“We have a bluestocking among us,” the Ferret said, in the tone of one who thought he was being funny. With a slight rustle, she was aware that the attention of the table had turned to her conversation. “I doubt you’ll have time after you marry.”

“I think a good husband would be supportive of his wife’s education,” she replied. “An intellectual meeting of minds would make a true partnership, would it not?”

“This is the Age of Sensibility,” the Raven said, his eyes sharp. “And fairy tales are a delight, especially from a lovely Fairy Princess such as yourself. But there are practicalities also.”

“Dear sir,” Celia prevaricated, “but one might say I am a foolish young woman. I am naïve enough to wish for a love-match.”

“My parents married for love. Their families were disobliged.” She was saddened to hear the bitterness in the Blue Cat’s voice at the bottom of the table. “Sometimes there is a happy ending.”

“Of course, of course,” the Ram beside her interrupted, “one must expect one’s family to be _obliged_.”

“Obrigada, good sir,” she said blithely. “I am thankful for the lesson.”

At the end of the too-long supper, she hitched up her train and excused herself from the table. Might not any woman wish to speak with her very own step-mother?

The Blue Cat was standing with Alice, and there was nothing slow about his smile. “Might we dance, my lady?” he said in a husky voice.

She took his hand and they progressed to the dance floor, her hand trembling, her face flushed with fever. When the music master asked her to call the dance, she announced clearly: “The waltz.”

The Cat’s eyes closed for a moment, and he settled his gloved hand very carefully on her back, raised his other arm in a high arch over head for her to complete. Up close, his eyes were very blue.

“You’re trembling,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.” His voice was ragged; he was as feverish as she.

The music began, and they began to turn and turn, under the bright candles, under the stars, the shine of the mirrors around them, alone together in that crowded room…

***

…and they spun, and spun, and spun again in the room of mirrors, of bright candles, of stars, and Edward thought that single precious moment might hold in his memory forever—

“I say! Imposter! Thief! _Shop boy_.” His older step-brother, the wretched Clive, his Ermine mask pulled off his face, grabbed him roughly by the shoulder and wrenched him back, staggering, to collide into a pillar behind him. Charles, the belligerent Ram, inserted himself into the gap and stood foursquare, preventing Edward from making things right. “I _do_ apologise for the behaviour of my valet,” he said suavely. “The boy is good with clothes, of course, but rather prone to aping his betters. He will be dismissed for laying hands on a lady of quality such as yourself, of course.” The clenching and unclenching of his fists, and the leer on Clive’s face behind him, promised a beating as well as a dismissal but oh, the satisfaction he had felt to see Lady Celia snub them during the supper. Edward curled in on himself, looking in vain for the cuff link torn from his sleeve by Clive’s blow, before grudgingly levering himself to his feet. That piece of Brummell’s gift lost was the only thing he would regret from this night, he promised himself. He turned to leave, his shoulder ringing peals of pain.

“Wait.” Celia—Lady Celia’s voice pealed out. “Let the boy speak.” In her dress of silver tissue she shone like the moon in splendour.

Edward drew a ragged breath and turned again, breathed deep to find some kind of centre, took off the foolishness and frippery of his domino mask. The footmen attending the ball had formed an honour guard around her, his step-brothers erstwhile pushed aside. She looked at him with pity, and that alone was enough to break him. “My mother—” his voice cracked “—my mother was a dressmaker. I loved her very much. We were making a living, we were, she was skilled at her trade; but she thought that marriage to the Earl would get me a better education. A foolish bargain as you can see, trying to polish up fool’s gold for the real thing.” He looked bitterly at the Cat mask, it’s gold filigree torn and battered, then let it fall to the ground. “I am sorry, madam, for so intruding on your time and person.”

He left before they could throw him out.


	6. After The Ball Is Over

Three months later:

Edward unwrapped the broadsheet protecting the delicate chinaware he had bought from a flea market. The cups and plates were chipped, but a boy with clever fingers might yet mend them. With gold, he thought, so that the hidden beauty of the repair might shine out; there was a woman on his street who had promised to show him the trick of it, when he had saved a few pennies for the leaf. It wasn’t in him, he had realised, to keep every coin by him for sensible things.

He read the broadsheet idly while he dusted the cups. The seller had used old papers from the Gazette, and he found himself reading through weeks of bankruptcies, company announcements and commissions. One name on the newly made bankrupts list caught his eye: Lord Fendalton, the Earl of Uxbridge. So the sale of all those books had not saved the man. Pity. He supposed the old library had gone as a job lot to a private collector—he’d been hoping to see some of his favourite volumes turning up in the book stalls, but nothing had appeared in the months since he had turned his back on the life of a gentleman. He wondered, with a wry smile, how the Earl was conducting himself in the debtor’s prison. Probably holding court over the drunkards and thieves and convincing the guards to bring him port. Another page brought him the advice that Charles had scraped together the funds to buy himself a commission in an unfashionable regiment billeted in Northumberland; no news of the lumbering Clive, who would have to bear the weight of his title with no ready money to grease himself through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He supposed sometimes that the best happy ending was just that you went on. If only, he thought, life could be a bit more…concrete. 

He had heard, through gossip and spiteful rumour, that his benefactor the good Mr Brummell had already sailed for France, departing on the midnight coach to Dover on the night of Lady Celia's ball, leaving the sin of gambling debts and tradesmen's bills behind him. Edward hoped that the Beau found Paris a congenial place to hold court in exquisite tailoring and the delight of a well-honed put down. That was how Edward would choose to think of him, in any case.

He picked up his sewing and went back to work. The tailor he had begged piecework from kept giving him side eyes, but the work kept coming all the same. The pennies were adding up, enough to pay for the little set of rooms he shared with Mama and Tio, and a bit more. The dream of Oxford was gone, but someday there might be a shop.

He heard loud bustling from the front of the house and his landlady shouting “Não, não, não em casa, nenhum visitante” and then an imperious voice belling out “No, really, I must insist. I promised my father that I would only marry the man who owns the match to this cufflink—see the cunning design? and I insist that every young fellow in this house be presented for examination. One can never be too sure, my good woman.”

Edward peeked out through his door, still in shirt sleeves. It was Lady Celia, as large as life, as grand as she ever was without her spectacles, cowing poor Dona Santos Almeida. She must have spotted him because she suddenly grinned fiercely and put on her brass rimmed glasses to become the friendly warm-hearted girl he knew was inside.

“Good madame,” he said carefully. “I might myself have an odd cufflink. It has a curious design of a slipper and a needle. Would you, er, would you be interested in making a comparison…?”

Shyly, he pulled his cufflink out of the velvet bag he kept it in and showed it her. Lady Celia, her eyes huge behind her pebbled lenses, opened one hand to show its twin. “I’ve been for _ever_ finding you, Edward. I’ve squared it with the old man, it’s just nobody seemed to know where you had gone to let you know. Father’s a good sort really, once you’re on his good side, and you will be. And Mama _already_ likes you, she thinks you’re very earnest and mean well. Please say you will.”

“Will what?” he said, just to be sure.

“Will be mine forever and ever. Will wake up with me, and talk about books with me, and make fun of all the silly stories in the society papers, and oh— Just be _you_. Will you be my husband, Edward?”

“I think you must know, my darling Celia,” he said, as he caught her slender form in his arms, and embraced her as for dear life. “I am quite terribly poor.”

She pulled back until she could look at him, her steady gaze calm and resolute, until it broke into the mischievous twinkle he hoped to see every day for the rest of his life. “And I am not a bit.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, and inhaled as if she wanted to remember his smell in her bones. “Some love matches are doomed to be happy. No drama, no tragic ending, nothing but happy sunshiney days for ever, enough to make the poets weep. I intend us to be a dreadful disappointment to them all.”

**Fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Dear ChocolatePot,
> 
> Thank you for the prompt - I loved the idea of a historical AU, but didn't feel up to a wagon train or the Upper East Side, and was already prepped for Regency; so hopefully it amuses.
> 
> Thanks to my beta for lots of cheerleading, and suggesting the chapter titles.
> 
> Some historical notes:  
>  _Kinder- und Hausmärchen_ : The Brothers Grimm collection was first published in 1812, which neatly fits in with my period. An illustration of the 1819 edition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm#/media/File:Kinder_title_page.jpg  
> Perrault’s _Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé: Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye_ which is the version of Cinderella that introduced the pumpkin and glass slipper was first published all the way back in 1697. 
> 
> “Olá, Edu, as senhoras,” the coachman called. “A chuva parou. Vamos!” – I got my Portuguese off the internet, and am really not up enough on Romance languages to crib all the distinctions in formal/informal and gender switches, so apologies to native speakers. This should read: “Hello, Edward, Ladies. The rain has stopped - let’s go.” “Obrigada” is a woman saying thank you, literally “I am obliged.” The landlady in the final scene is announcing that there’s no one at home and she doesn’t allow visitors.
> 
> “I feel like I’m living in the Parson’s Tale” – from “The Parson’s Tale” of _The Canterbury Tales_ : “that through their shortness cover not the shameful member of man, to wicked intent alas! some of them shew the boss and the shape of the horrible swollen members, that seem like to the malady of hernia” and quite a lot more. Clearly, the parson had put a _lot of thought_ into how sinful closely fitting pairs of hose were. http://www.online-literature.com/chaucer/canterbury/25/ or for a translation https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/parsons-prologue-and-tale (lines 420-43)
> 
> “Edward blushed scarlet as a cardinal.” – while I _could_ have been referring to either a high-ranking Catholic priest or the bright red bird native to America, I am actually referring to the red cloak commonly worn from the mid 18th to early 19th century, because it’s fun to pick up random historical details just for the heck of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUmO7rBMdoU (from 4:40) and https://www.janeausten.co.uk/tag/cardinal-cloak/ 
> 
> “The dandy’s eyes glinted.” – this is of course, the inestimable Beau Brummell, dandy and inventor of the modern day suit. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a particularly happy ending (he died in debt and exile, of syphilis); but let us picture a fairy tale ending of the good dandy (in Edward's head at least) forever holding court in some salon or assembly, perfectly turned out, each witticism finely tuned, and laying down the new fashions to a hair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Brummell 
> 
> “It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order of the day.” – cribbing from the inestimable Jane Austen, who I think must have liked balls, except when she didn’t.
> 
> The dances at Lady Celia’s ball:  
> \- the minuet was a very graceful stately dance emphasising small steps and glides and was the old-fashioned way to open a ball such as this one;  
> \- most of the dances would have been ‘country dances’ that involved either long lines of partners facing each other with the ‘first’ lady in the line getting to call the specific patterns they would dance, or round dances such as quadrilles – these could take up to half an hour to complete and were a prime opportunity to do some flirting without a chaperone looking over your shoulder;  
> \- the waltz was new in England at the time this story is set (roughly 1816), and was considered very racy because each pair embraced each other for the whole dance. One of my sources described it as an expression of overflowing emotion because of its emphasis on continual turning, and theorised that this sprang from the youth who had lived through the revolutions of the late 18th century needing to physically express their sense of “freedom, character, passion, and expressiveness.”  
> https://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/a-private-regency-ball.html  
> https://www.britannica.com/art/Western-dance/During-the-17th-18th-and-19th-centuries (sometimes paywalled)  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r0dKkkk2jk (early waltzes)
> 
> Edward’s pantaloons are also very racy as evening dress, although they were now acceptable during the day. But it’s an ‘undress’ masquerade ball, and Brummell was _the_ fashionista of his day, so we’re going for it.
> 
> Repairing china with gold – this is the Japanese technique of kintsugi using epoxy mixed with gold leaf, which is so beautiful more people should know about it. https://mymodernmet.com/kintsugi-kintsukuroi/


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